Bear Power!

May 2004

Bravo’s hit cable series “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” is a remarkable phenomenon. In it, five homosexuals offer grooming and decorating tips to an un-hip heterosexual guy. By following gay advice about hair removal and puff pastry, the straight guy’s previously slovenly life is, supposedly, transformed into something more fabulous than it was before his queer make-over.

At first, “Queer Eye” seems an advance for the gay cause– who’d have thought just a decade ago that an overt gay sensibility would be so embraced by those marketing television shows and all the products they peddle? And yet, there is something profoundly unsettling about Queer Eye’s vision of gay life.

In all the consumeristic blather about gorgeous shoes, trendy bistro fare, and wrinkle-reducing night creams, Queer Eye offers not one scrap of insight about courage, individualism, or brotherhood– the more enduring qualities that can come from living as a homosexual in a heterocentrist world. And since sponsors do not want viewers to be distracted by reminders of nasty gay sex, the Queer Eye guys are utterly neutered. The biggest contribution gay guys could offer a straight buddy would be, of course, access to the handjobs, suckoffs, and buttsex that straight life doles out in miserly portions. But instead of liberating their straight guinea pig, the Queer Eye guys prissify and perfume him. Indeed, the Queer Eye show has the discomfiting feel of a 1950s high school Home Ec filmstrip aimed at teen girls aspiring to be perfect ladies.

Happily, though, the gay movement has also seen the rise of an antidote to the impulse to de-sex and re-package gay life as nothing more than correct purchasing decisions.

Initially conceived as a remedy to the marginalization of older gay men who did not have the smooth skin and lean muscles of porn stars, the Bear movement born in the 1980s asserted a radically non-exclusive sexuality. For Bears and admirers, the male body was not an enemy to be exfoliated, deodorized, starved, and painted over. Bald pates became signs of masculinity, not reminders of dreaded aging to be hidden under expensive rugs. Hairy backs signified virility, not cause for painful waxings. And larger Dionysian bodies joined slim ephebes and muscled bodybuilders as potential objects of sexual attention.

The Bear movement reminds us that no one needs the correct hair highlights or designer sheets to be sexual. No matter ones age or weight or hairiness, Bear mentality offers a welcome escape from both Madison Avenue-inspired anxieties (“does my cologne go with my socks?”) and narrow visions of sexual possibilities (“people over 40 having sex– yuch!”). By disregarding all the consumeristic hoopla trumpeted by Queer Eye, Bears– and other similarly enlightened souls– can shed needless insecurities and take on the appealing self-assurance that comes from projecting ones real self, not an off-the-rack image.

Today’s Bears carry on the wonderful message of gay liberation: you are okay the way you are. Trying to be straight (or the hippest, best-dressed Queer Eye model) is not only psychically taxing, but also bespeaks a decidedly unappealing lack of self-confidence. Rejecting worldly notions of what’s important (whether that be a heterosexual identity or Prada shoes) develops trust in one’s own self, the foundation for life and love based not on imagery but reality.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=4887F12A-C187-4AA0-A56BE5F54A948C15>